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The importance of sleep can’t be underestimated, but the benefits
of catching your z’s go beyond banishing under-eye circles.
Getting sufficient sleep offers a big
boost for productivity and mental alertness, making you more
effective at running your business.

Jawbone, a creator of wearable technology, recently announced the
launch of its latest app -- UP 3.1 -- that connects
a wristband (called the UP band) to an app on iPhone or
android device to help users understand how they sleep, move
and eat. The app uses data collected by the UP band to draw
correlations between activity patterns and restfulness,
tracking deep sleep (or “sound sleep” as Jawbone calls it),
then sends personal notifications and actions to users’
smartphone to help them improve sleep behaviors.

Andrew Rosenthal, group manager for Jawbone’s Wellness Products,
says the app’s importance is its ability to measure the
previously unknowable. “Prior to having a wearable device that
tracked your sleep, I didn’t know much about my own sleep
habits,” he says. “I was trying to get the right amount of sleep,
trying to get distractions out of the bedroom, trying to get [a
good night’s] sleep but doing it without any data, without any
guidance. We now know how we sleep; not in a sleep lab where it’s
an artificial environment, but in everyday life.”

The company recently revealed some interesting sleep data it
collected when developing the new app. Surveying 40,000 Jawbone
UP users, the data provided great insights into how sleep
patterns affect productivity.

Technology. A laptop in bed, for example,
resulted in 37 fewer minutes of deep sleep. And those who slept
with a mobile phone reduced their sound sleep by 13 minutes.

Sound sleep. Although on average, those who
logged seven hours of sleep were 30% more likely to report
feeling rested, more optimistic, focused and productive the next
day; sufficient sleep was found to be more than simply about the
number of hours of shut-eye. Sound sleep, as measured by moments
of sleep when the body is completely still, was found to matter
most when it came to the recovery and mental performance benefits
of sleep.

Causes of sleeplessness. The study also revealed
insights into what causes us to lose sleep. Stress was the
leading cause of sleeplessness, with nearly half of users who
reported difficulty falling asleep attributing their restlessness
to stress. 20% attributed their sleeplessness to room
temperature, 18% to simply not feeling tired and only 3% reported
difficulty falling asleep thanks to children or noisiness.

The impact of caffeine. Entrepreneurs (myself
included) are known for their caffeine addiction. To allow users
to track caffeine input during the day and understand how
caffeine affects their sleep patterns, Jawbone also introduced a
free Up Coffee app. After collecting caffeine and sleep data for
10 days, the app tells users whether they’re wired, OK, or
sleep-ready and at what time of day it’s safe to have their last
drop of coffee without leaving them with eyes-wide-open all night
long. “Getting this immediate feedback on what amount of caffeine
is within your system helps you understand yourself in the
moment. Crawling into bed, turning off the light, turning over
the phone, making sure the laptop is out of the bedroom is only
part of the equation. You need to also make sure that you’re
sleep-ready,” says Rosenthal.

Health tracking apps are the latest trend in improving health.
Rosenthal says tracking apps are the first step in helping
individuals understand and take real actions. In addition to
tracking sleep, movement and eating habits, the UP app sends
users actionable suggestions called “Today I Wills” (such as,
tonight I will go to bed at 11:45). Clicking “I’m in” commits the
individual to the action and sends a message to their friends who
they share their UP data with. Committing to an action has had
great results. “We know we can get people to bed earlier by using
these ‘Today I Will’s’,” says Rosenthal, adding Jawbone’s data
shows people who commit to the app’s daily suggestions log 23
minutes of additional sleep.